Canadian Retailer - The Supply Chain & Logistics Issue - 18

THE INTERNET OF THINGS
IMPACT OF IoT

34 billion
The number of
individual devices
connected to the
internet by 2020.
Source: Business
Insider

$6 trillion

$94 billion

72%

$2 trillion

The amount of
business investment in
IoT solutions in 2020.
Source: Business Insider

IoT technology
in retail alone is
projected to be
a $94 billion US
business by 2025.
Source: Business
Insider

Percentage of
businesses that plan on
reinventing their supply
chains to integrate IoT
technology.
Source: Forbes

The estimated
impact of IoT
technology on the
logistics industry in
the years ahead.
Source: Cisco

vices tool, where they could actually send pop-ups
to customers as they shop," Barton says. "As they
come close to a bookstore, for instance, they will
get a pop-up message on their phone that tells them
about a sale on a particular magazine or book, once
you come within ten feet or so."
And while these advances have already created
big changes on the digital plane, they have also
begun to affect stores in a physical sense-not only
does it allow retailers to negotiate higher lease rates
for high-traffic areas and endcaps, but it's even being used to transform a store's entire layout.
"With one client, they noticed that a large percentage of people were going to the Hardware
Department," Barton explains. "And
directly after that, they would go
to the Food Court. They concluded
"...WE NEED SERVICES THAT ARE MORE
ACCESSIBLE, THAT ARE EASY TO DEPLOY. AND
these were probably men shopping
WHEN THAT HAPPENS, I THINK THE PENETRAfor tools, and then grabbing a bite
TION RATE IS JUST GOING TO SKYROCKET. WE
to eat afterward. So, they started to
JUST HAVE TO MAKE IT EASIER FOR THE WORLD
look at their floor plan to accommoIN GENERAL TO DO THIS."
date that demographic. For example,
- ROB BARTON
putting Sporting Goods in the path
Cisco
between the Food Court and the
Hardware Department, to get that
This information can be gleaned using mul- demographic to go in a certain direction. You can
tiple methods, including Bluetooth beacons, GPS, take all of this data, and use it to inform business
and even Visible Light Communication-high-fre- decisions in a way you couldn't before."
quency pulses from LED lights that communicate
with smartphones to provide accurate customer Breaking the (Supply) Chain
positions within ten centimetres. Starting in 2015, Beyond the stores themselves, IoT technologies
Target took this concept a step further, pioneering are already transforming the retail world from the
a smartphone app that was one part indoor posi- ground up. And nowhere is that transformation
tioning system, and one part digital shopping as- more apparent than in the supply chain. Auto-ID
sistant. Mounted on shopping carts, the app greets tags and Low Power Wide Area Networks have
customers with a free cup of coffee, provides direc- begun to supplant the traditional barcode, allowing
tions to products, and automatically gives detailed companies to track their assets at a granular level
comparison information when they approach items anywhere in the world (even when there's no cell
they're looking for. The same sorts of technologies service), and analyze that information in real-time.
are currently being explored in Europe by retailers NFC (near-field communication) tags can now be
such as France's Carrefour. And the applications go used in conjunction with apps that transform mofurther still; with this ability to track customers on bile devices into portable scanners. Companies like
such a granular level comes an unprecedented op- Amazon are already using wi-fi connected robots
that work alongside humans, locating merchanportunity for in-store promotions.
"In the case of one of our clients, they imple- dise, and reading QR codes. And although these
mented a connector with Cisco's location-based ser- changes are only in the early stages, the effect has
So much more in store

As it turns out, some of those applications begin
right at the store level. In fact, as Rob Barton,
Principal Systems analyst with IT giant Cisco explains, IoT technology can be used to enhance the
customer experience from the moment they walk
through the door.
"A lot of stores have free WiFi, and that's a nice
thing for shoppers," he notes. "But it's also a huge advantage from an IoT perspective for the retail chain
or the store, because it allows them to see where
people are. Where they're congregating, where
they're spending their time. And that information
can allow you to make changes to the business."

18 |

CANADIAN RETAILER

| THE SUPPLY CHAIN & LOGISTICS ISSUE

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Canadian Retailer - The Supply Chain & Logistics Issue